1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document conversion system for a document processing apparatus implemented in a client/server system, which converts and transfers a document between a client and a server.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a document processing apparatus implemented in a client/server system, there may be a case where the client wants the server to transfer the table of contents of a document for confirmation of its content before requesting the server to transfer the entire document, and then requests the server to transfer necessary portions of the document based on its table of contents, or where, when the client modifies portions of a document, it wants to transfer only the modified portions instead of the entire document to update the document in the server.
In such a case, the conventional document processing apparatus obtains a document structure in the client or server by analyzing morphological features of the document or utilizing control character strings in the document, constructs the table of contents based on it, and divides the document into minimum units corresponding to each item or document piece.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2-158862 describes an example of such prior art. In the technology, a document edit section connects to an input section, an output section, a document structure analyzer section, and a storage section, and a document management section is provided between the document edit section and the storage section. Here, the document management section consists of a version management section and a document composition section, while the storage section is further divided into, for one document, a storage section for version information file, a storage section for document composition file, and a storage section for a plurality of document files. A document created in the document edit section is analyzed for its morphological features in the document structure analyzer section, thereby a document structure is extracted. The document edit section generates a table of contents from the document structure. The document management section divides the documents into document pieces each of which is a minimum unit corresponding to each item of the table of contents, and stores the document composition in the document composition file storage section, and each document piece in the document file storage section.
However, in this conventional arrangement, since the analyzer section for document structure is incorporated in the server or client, or in both constituting the document processing apparatus, if it is intended to newly add a document structure analysis function and a document conversion function to the document processing apparatus, or if it is intended to modify an existing document structure analysis function and an existing document conversion function, there arises a problem that modification is required for all clients or servers, or both.
In addition, since document data may have a special format for document structure analysis and document conversion, if it is intended for a document structure analysis function and a document conversion function to be newly added, or if it is intended to modify an existing document structure analysis function and an existing document conversion function, it may require not only modification of functions in the document processing apparatus, but also modification of document data. Consequently, if document processing is performed while using another document processing apparatus, there arises a problem that document data is required to be maintained for a document in a plurality of formats corresponding to the respective document processing apparatus, and integrity is required to be maintained between the document data in such plurality of formats.